Theresa Caputo

I found this book in the Newport Beach Public Library's Friend's Used Books Shop and just HAD to get it for my brother. He and his wife got to see Theresa do what she does last year and really enjoyed it.
I don't have a good excuse for reading it before turning it over, except that I like to make sure a gift (even a used one) is a good one.
In this autobiographical book Theresa explains how she came to believe as she does in life after death, the power of love to keep us connected to and supported by loved ones who’ve passed on, and the power of Faith.… (plus d'informations)

Running notes from re-read:

I have to say, when I read this as a curious Christian, I didn’t grasp what she really goes through with people to do what she does…. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t both Christians who are more problematic than they “need” to be, and ones that doing their best…. And of course, there are “consensus Christians”, as I call them, and I guess “dissident Christians”, although I have to admit that the terms are almost as fuzzy as the old “going to heaven Christians” and “(curses labels and abuse)”, right. Almost, at least.

But yeah, you wouldn’t want to “read someone’s body language” in order to pretend that you were “talking to the dead” or whatever, but I do think it’s funny that some people try to add to the stigma of mediumship or whatever, by associating it with “reading body language”, which I guess is stigmatized (because people aren’t good at it, and) because Everything to do with the body is taboo, basically—unless it’s a materialist doctor who is or convinces people that he’s an atheist—and the old, common type of atheist, in particular, the one that everyone expects in certain situations, right~ and ultimately because the old, mainstream religion cared very little for the body, in practice, almost in toto: it doesn’t agree with it, you know…. If you can square those two circles, as people I guess subconsciously imagine that they can, because at least they’re both not rectangles or quadrilaterals, right.

But yeah: but she’s not bitter. She’s actually a very pleasant woman. She’s a woman, and not just to save spirit talkers from their gender bias. She’s a woman because that’s what she is, right….

…. It is a truth that sometimes people learn the things they learn, not from books. And it doesn’t always make for bad reading….

…. I put this with the “paranormal” books rather than my “witchy” psych books—mediumship does kinda seem to fit in to me with spiritual-science, you know, I call it: “ghost INVESTIGATION and mediumship” (caps added), although it is true that some paranormal books have more of a para-psychological investigate-the-occult-sciences feel than others, you know. Theresa must have had a lot of past life experience built up from this, because she’s a born intuitive and does not need and is unable to benefit from, books and such. (Like a sort of Regular Old Long Island Girl version of Sadhguru, who doesn’t read books: he just experiences things, and then writes about it.)

But yeah, it’s surprising how similar it can be to things like tarot I actually know something about now. (And I actually do know enough now that I notice these things, which kinda swept by me before, although I’ve always puzzled over tarot from time to time, but I didn’t play the game serious, you know, and study. I learn largely through books.) Like the images-with-multiple-meanings, and the get-what-you-need-maybe-not-what-you-want, right. Although it’s funny, I’m a fearful person, so for me, a lot of it is reassurance, but then, when I’m REALLY wound up, that’s almost not want I want! I don’t fucking know what I want—sometimes I ask that, LOL! (Sometimes when I ask a REALLY stupid question my phone acts up, you know.) And yeah: over-reliance on tools…. Theresa doesn’t use any tools at all! SHE is the tool, lol!

…. And sometimes there are kinda “life lessons”, despite (or equally, because?) they’re told in teaching stories rather than metaphysical jargon and transcendent-theological prose, right. Sometimes things are meant to happen—even though it was unpleasant, nothing you could have done could have kept it from happening. There’s this cultural belief in “Prudence” you know, in this totally unbalanced, immoderate way, like—if you’re always prudent, then nothing bad or unpleasant would ever happen. What do people suppose that life experience is, though? It’s this very churched belief: but it’s very un-spiritual, you know…. (Callous Old Man) (waves stick) If you had gone to church, you never would have been embarrassed! You shoulda been Prudent, Rocky! (You coulda been a contender! Charlie! You shoulda looked out for me!)…. ~You know, and it’s like, bat shit, basically. Sometimes bad things will happen, that you never could have learned the lesson, without…. You know, it’s like: sometimes if you go into business and make $100 billion, sometimes you lose $100 million along the way, right—and people who don’t know anything about money—who don’t WANT to know anything about money because they’re afraid of it because they think it’s “bad” 🧌, who work for some simple, average wage because they’re afraid to change jobs or take a risk, (unless it’s to take a degree without any obvious actionable content, but which makes them feel like Lord Downton Abbey who wipes his ass with quid notes because he has money and doesn’t want it, basically)…. You know, and then that (lost a hundred million on the path to unspeakable wealth) means—I mean, if you’re ill, things mean anything, right; they really do…. Money is bad and I don’t want it and I’d be culpable if I understood it and I know more about it than Bezos does because I read a book about him, right…. I mean, somebody dies and you’re not a medium that they book a reading with, you don’t tell them these things, right. But either there’s a reason why things happen, or else these three remain, right: prudence, Prudence, and PRUDENCE. ~Your pick. 😏

…. Archangels:

Michael— Justice
Gabriel—Kindness
Raphael—Healing

It’s obviously incredibly easy to be cynical about “Michael” energy, you know. Every Grand Inquisitor thinks he’s Archangel Michael, right. I feel like the First World War Germans called one of their big offensives “Operation Michael”, right. Hitler obviously thought that he was the Archangel Michael, or some crazy thing. Hitler thought he was an opera character, you know. I guess his plan was to have an opera based on his life after the war—he probably had his theme song all picked out, and the actor who would play himself, right. (And no, I don’t care how you say “theme song” in German. German, French, Latin—they’re all “gakgak”, as they say in Danish, you know. (Crazy.) Support the underdog languages, something people don’t assume you Just Know Somehow, and treat you like a dog if you make a mistake in, right.) Stalin would be the Archangel Michael too, except he was too…. Stalin. Even conservatives aren’t as afraid of Stalin as they are of Hitler, right; Stalin was too…. Too something. Or rather, not enough. He definitely didn’t care about opera, right. “So tell me, Comrade: opera is where they dance around but they don’t say anything?” “No, Comrade; that’s ballet.” “And they still have these things: opera and ballet?” “Uh…. Yeah, Comrade.” “Well, that’s good, Comrade. Waste of bullets. Some little ballerina boy comes here singing and dancing, trying to do a coup, I just punch him in the nose and he falls on his little girl ass. I even let him go back to singing, only I assign him little girl songs to sing, as strict punishment. That would be all there would be to that.”

But yeah: it’s interesting how Michael (the angel, not the Kaiser Offensive), protected a young person who “played with an Ouija board”. Now, inherently a Ouija board is just a tool for talking with the dead or spirits—which is what many people, like this girl, do in a respectful, responsible way in accordance with Light, right. But Ouija boards do tend to attract people who use them in incredibly disrespectful, irresponsible, beyond-lax ways, right. You could cook yourself an egg with a gas stove—I mean, don’t eat eggs; the fucking chickens get treated as though they’re terrorists being detained on factory farms, which is 99% of the farm chicken population, right—but yeah, gas stoves could cook shit in a perfectly safe way~ can you imagine somebody being like, I Will Not Come Over Your House Until You Get Rid Of Your Gas Stove, right: but you could blow up your house with them, right, if you were so inclined. You have to do research, and be respectful, and make sure that you’re living in the light, and that you can do basic psychic self-protection stuff. One source mentions casting a Circle; the Archangel Michael might also be a good ally. I mean: and you have to realize that not all dead people are less problematic than living people. I don’t think it’s a trivial activity/opportunity, since I do think that dead people have opportunities that we do not have. It’s like inter-cultural communication, right. Yeah, but for all we know, Stalin is still out there, and he still doesn’t quite grasp this justice vs judicial murder distinction…. Or the difference between ballet and opera, lol.

…. I would imagine on the Enneagram, Michael would be 8, 9, & 1; and Gabriel would be 2-4, and Raphael 5-7, right…. I once read a burn-the-brujas Catholic inquisitor manual on angels—you know, a C.S. Lewis fan—and at least 80% was just venting about the new age/Hollywood/California, right, (LOTS of stereotypes: they will know you by the way you disregard your enemy’s POV, right—most Californians probably tolerate shamans and such, but most certainly look on them as clowns, right: and a certain percentage of Californians, (it is a literal place, after all, not a stereotype from a Harry Potter novel, right), are classic country music racists, right…. And most of the rest have the kinda “Ocean Breeze Racism” they mocked on that episode on “Blackish”, right), but yeah: one of the actual points with content he mentioned was how angels—like “Michael”, etc—are kinda types; like I would say they’re more like a species of non-human animal in that sense~ like in his Merlin novel, he wrote two Merlin books, but specifically in the novel, Deepak Chopra talked about animals, with their kinda non-egoic/non-rational/linguistic/individuated consciousness, kinda experience themselves usually as like, Canada Goose— or whatever they call themselves—although obviously on one level there are individual geese are well, right…. But yeah, there must be many angels who are “Michael”—although none of them, like, egged on whitey to put the torch to the red man’s corn fields and village/town, right…. And there are also other lesser types that you could find out from (say, Jewish) folklore or angel oracle card decks, aside from the kinda Big 3/Biblical types, right. Like the Bible isn’t a terribly speculative book in that sense, but it makes sense they would at least include like the highest-level angels which are over all the others, which it did, right.

…. Now, on the one hand, it’s both truly and totally appropriate to warn people that if you hate yourself and think negative thoughts all the time, you’ll probably find a tarot reader who takes you for a ride, right, (or else an unusually moralistic one, right—at least while you’re in the room with her. I guess those were the two main reactions I got when I was ill, although because of folklore like this, I remembered only that one kind—“money money money/always sunny/in the rich man’s world”…. And a lot of people with mental illness kinda go around acting like they’re very stupid rich people, until they have about 75 cents left in the bank…. And yeah, I guess there was also the odd indifferent reader, right…. You know, just like, just phoning it in, right: I’m tired; I should go home for the day…. I could set boundaries with people…. But then, I’m getting paid not to, right!…. I feel like my last job was like that too, let’s see: that was back when I….)…. But it’s like, I don’t know: there’s also the aspect of how the metaphysical community gets gaslit and marginalized even by, say, well-meaning Catholics who are Part Of the metaphysical community, right. I realize that some people wouldn’t get that, but it’s like, not that she’s unusually or explicitly anti-feminist, but have you ever met one of that class of aliens named Woman, right? Do you think it could be like that? —Go on, get in your cage. ~(walks in) (squawks) Not enough bedding! —(gives bedding) ~(goes to sleep) ….. ~~It’s like: do you think it could be like that?…. And I mean, some people would kinda laugh rudely, and say, I don’t know that the world really wasn’t perfect before women could vote! All the important Catholic doctrines were laid down in the Age of Man: the Age of Woman (?) has given us nothing but shitty pop songs, and, trips to the bathroom to poop! ~And for once, we were almost agreed…. It’s like: very dualistic, you know: God’s white light vs “negative Spirit”…. The children of lyte!! The children of dahknesse!…. I mean, it’s nice how she tries to “include” Native cultures, the way a philosophy book might “include” women with fifteen pages of Simone de Beauvoir: now the Race of Woman has been accounted for…. I mean, don’t get me wrong: it’s not an easy question. But it’s like: you think that maybe Native people don’t share the whole colonial dualism thing, right?…. I mean, a lot of it is practical: ground and center, meditate, don’t assume that every goblin is a good goblin who has your back, right…. (This is a really good deal that guy is giving you. That is the car for you!…. I feel like the electric motor’s range numbers are accurate, you know: I feel that; I really do….). But it’s like: does SEXISM come from “negative Spirit”—or just, you know, Mischief Night shit, and horror movie plots based on a combination of self-fulfilling prophecies/the law of attraction, and incredibly dishonest handling of the “facts”, probably in at least Some cases, right…. I mean, give me a fucking break…. And it annoys me: because I’m the idiot who falls for this shit, right. I’m the one merrily walking the path of radicalism, until fucking…. Generic Children’s Horror Movie (let’s try to make them afraid of an enemy we refuse to say anything about, or even portray as frightening: I know we’ll only net the Real fucking losers—but it will make me feel good, right….), comes along and fucking….

Anyway….

[Mercury Retrograde, ahhh! It still hasn’t reset itself all the way! There was another fucking paragraph in here!…. Ah, fuck!]

Just yeah, how a lollipop is not hard candy, I don’t get. But that’s the thing about schizophrenia: it’s not really one disease, the way a political movement—Mussolinism, or something—can be like one disease, maybe. Every schizoid goblin throwing tantrums inside people’s heads is different, right…. But the world is crazy, too: right? “Wotan, because you are vaguely like Loki….” “Hey, wait a minute, we both like rune poems, and he works for me: but we’re not entirely the same; are summer and winter exactly alike?” “But it’s not just that, Wotan! Your name begins with the wrong letter! It begins with an entirely inappropriate letter of the alphabet! Have you ever considered a name in the ‘J’ family, for instance?” “(gripping spear impatiently) What’s this, now? You don’t like My Name?”

…. But yeah: she tries. She’s trying. It’s not at all to be assumed that people living in the environment of today would know always how to treat people the right way or know all the things necessary to be known, especially when many of the things we’re taught can get in the way of that. Just being a Catholic, and a pop girl, who’s part of the metaphysical community—who is ANY part of it, right—shows considerable stretch towards what is right: regardless of her being kinda on the centrist or occasionally center-right part of that spectrum, right. In an age with more appropriate ideas, that disposition would be more, the way it should be, I guess. But none of us are alone in that, right.

…. She is right about reincarnation and that “cruel punishment and judgment” are basically earthly things, and not part of Heaven’s evaluations of how well we learn our soul lessons and learn love. Even your average “liberal” Christian doesn’t get things like that—they tend to deny totally rather than simply investigate, but de-emphasize, everything “weird”, (she doesn’t try to count the choirs of angels, and things like that, which clearly are hard to truly grasp), and also most Christians—just in general—tend to believe that we ought to *believe* that there is judgment, and *act* as though there isn’t, a teaching which is basically a collective moral failure far greater than any individual moral failure that ultimately grows out of that felt duty to perfectly hold that incredible ambivalence, you know….

So yeah: easier to get emotional about ‘wrong’ things than ‘right’ things, but I too participate in the human negativity bias, even as a “loving” person who reads “spiritual” books, and even when I agree with much of them, right. 🤷‍♂️

…. This is from…. Well, I won’t tell you what it’s from, but it’s not a direct descendant of the text itself: but I don’t think that the dead feel the hostility that the living feel, you know. Or at least, it isn’t common, I don’t think…. The shamans like to call the Middle World, the human/ordinary world, the world of pain, right….

And you know—and I’m not comparing the two traditions; shamans certainly take great joy in living, as a rule—but in the East they like to talk about the great luck in being born human; I’m not sure I quite agree that it would have been more usual to be a pig, dog, or sheep, or whatever—although I have read “Animal Farm”, and I did think the last chapter of Plato’s Republic quite plausible…. True, somehow…. But yeah, the Buddhists like to remind you as you’re doing the Eastern peasant rendition of Sisyphus that you had great luck in being a human and not a blackbird or whatever…. Which I certainly wouldn’t argue with; I’m not a bash-the-humans-envy-the-Black-Labradors type, you know….

But yeah: it’s funny, I don’t feel much, well I don’t feel much of anything from the dead, but certainly an unusual calmness, by our standards, right…. I’m sure you could get into trouble “talking to the dead”, but—and I’m sure this isn’t 100% true, because some people Are drawn to the weird excessively, or find that one awful ghostie, right— but probably the person nutty enough to get into trouble with the dead could get into trouble with the living—with their family, or even at work, (oh, how people can be temporarily sane at work, though, right), or on the internet…. Or isolating, not because of spirit beings but because of TikTok, say…. Which isn’t about TikTok specifically, you know; it can be quite funny, and not informative so much, but honest, which is useful…. I just think it’s hypocritical, because if it weren’t Weird Youth Culture of the 2020s, Exhibit A, the dummies in Congress would find a way to justify continuing the Nixon thing we’ve been doing with China so long we almost forget that there’s other poor, industrializing countries, lol…. I suppose we don’t forget about Mexico, lol….

But yeah: I digress….

…. But yeah, I feel like time sits very differently with you once you’re dead, right: and I don’t think that that’s totally reducible to the not inconsequential factor of that condition kinda having the effect of really clearing your schedule, right…. Which isn’t all to say that the dead are all “completely enlightened”, like it’s an automatic entry into the Eckhart Tolle All-Tibet Orchestra & Chorus, right: most of them are kinda ordinary, after a certain mode of comparison, you know—like a lot of them are kinda the old dead, or the old-old dead, and the white dead, you know…. Wonderfully precise, I’m being, no? Although it’s weird, I can’t imagine going to an undisturbed, normal grave and not having some presence or memory of that person’s soul, even if, “logically”, (is it logic?) if it’s been 20 or 50 or 80 or 100 years, you’d think that eventually they’d reincarnate, right…. Adventure novels always need a higher proportion of comically evil people than you commonly meet with, but would it be like a Voldemort thing: like, his diary and all the other soul-canisters, (or, What-Ever!!!), that he left lying around or squirreled away, right—it would leave behind a memory, or something…. And kinda twice-faint, if you’re dealing with a faint memory of an ordinary soul, right…. But yeah: I feel like concepts like time and fear rest very differently with the dead than they do with us, although I think in the majority of cases, it would be easy to exaggerate their knowledge, basically.

Although you get the feeling that the majority of people ease their grip on most of their delusions, too. Delusions basically come from pain…. Often knowledge does, as well.

….. Although it’s funny: among Quaker graves I didn’t quite get the sense that this was the “white dead”, you know. I mean, I literally sat with a veteran and his wife—I felt drawn there, and I was like, Really?~ but I did it—and I did not feel that this was, again, that “white dead” feeling like with the Episcopalians…. No special impression, just that. Although yeah: if I were going to be a Dharmo-Christian again, I guess I’d have gone to the Quaker meeting-house instead of the Episcopal church, you know….

But yeah: I did get the sudden thought that I should do the knee-muscle stretch when I got back to the library…. I’ve been forgetting about that when I really feel I should do it, you know. So, maybe that is a ‘—, although, yeah: it’s not something you know. Let alone “prove” to a jacka—, I mean, an atheist.

…. I might inadvertently swap one of the words, and I’m intentionally re-arranging them, but I suppose, by experience, it seems that letting go of the “music, dance, happiness”, also tends to loosen, if not to drop, the “gratitude”, out of “meditation, prayer, gratitude”, you know.

…. It is true that negativity is basically a choice, you know—things that are unpleasant happen to everyone, but you choose, in the end, how you feel about it, you know. That was the stereotypical Albert Ellis point—he called it the “interpretation” of the event, right: for him it was an intense mental tennis match, you know…. Just to turn the positive back into a negative—lol—it is kinda funny how Albert thought that he was the only thinker who’s ever lived, basically. I mean, he advertises borrowing from Epictetus “and other European and Asian philosophers”, but never imagines that anybody could ever have a parallel, independent discovery, you know: he was just God, and we were Hotdog, right…. And the Long Island Medium (it’s a pun, see? hahaha), IS about as similar to Albert as chalk is to cheese, right: as Kansas is to kimchi. “But Kansas isn’t food…. Kimchi isn’t a state….” 🤯

Right.

It is funny how people, usually but not only men—you know, liberal men: I mean, conservative and normie men think that women are just dirty rags to be tossed aside, you know…. But many liberal men are like, If women were indoctrinated/if there were no propaganda/control, women would just be men, right; we would all be men…. I guess I thought that once: even when I first bought and read this book, lol…. But as much as legalism and control and various blunt and veiled insults distort gender, you know: it can be amazing how different women and men are…. Like, women are not just failed, stifled men, any more than they’re meant to be dish rags, you know: they’re women…. Which isn’t to say that biology leads to—I don’t know, a lot of what is formally called “essentialism”, or biology as destiny, IS wrong, you know…. But masculinity and femininity ARE very different, and even if some large chunk of men being the masculine ones and all that—no one knows how much—IS propaganda/control…. You know, maybe it is arbitrary to assume that women will always be the feminine ones, but women are not just failed men by virtue of being feminine, right…. A lot of the world’s “common sense”, and even scholarship and such, IS based upon very deep, assumed, pernicious lies and misogyny, you know…. There is this other choice, distinct from masculinity, and women tend to embody that other choice in today’s culture. It’s not just that they couldn’t think “the right way”, you know…. People think on some level that their experience of abuse invalidates their culture, you know: their gender’s culture. Or their lack of wealth, or prestige…. And then all those prejudices are bundled up and called “morality” and “reason” and so on, right. It’s wild.

…. It is true that she teaches that fear isn’t supposed to cancel out faith. Sometimes religion can do that. Sometimes people get incredibly angry at that pattern, and then do likewise.

~I’m not sure that I would pray for suicide victims specifically, just in the sense of separating them out, right. I would like to spend more time with the dead—their land, so to speak, (tombstone-land), and in my thoughts/meditations. But although some deaths clearly are far from ideal, for all sorts of different reasons…. I mean, nothing against healthcare professionals, but it’s almost like that illness-centric bias that they have, right. People, living people, need health, not just illness-alleviation measures. Similarly, the dead aren’t really a “cause of death”, you know: they’re just…. the dead, you know.

But it is curious, the idea of coming to the dead with your compassion, and not just on a hunt for the Information, right. A lot of her ideas are curious.… (plus d'informations)